"Celebrity Apprentice" Contestant: Trump Faked Being In Charge On Show, May Still Be Faking

By: Mackenzie Wright | July 15, 2017

President Donald Trump has bragged time and time again about his reality show, 'The Celebrity Apprentice', and even trademarked the famous phrase, "You're fired." As it turns out, Trump only looked like he was calling the shots, pretending to be the boss while actually taking direction from the network. One former 'Celebrity Apprentice' star wonders if Trump is running the country the same way now.

Clay Aiken, 'American Idol' runner-up and 2012 'Celebrity Apprentice' contestant, says Donald Trump had no real power on the show. "Trump didn't decide who got fired on Apprentice, I mean, NBC made those decisions," Aiken said. "There used to be a little thing right on his desk that looked like a phone - he pretended it was a phone - but it was actually a teleprompter where the producers were sending him notes."

The North Carolina resident dished to the North Carolina News and Observer about his time with the Commander-in-Chief. "He didn't know that people were getting in fights during the week while we were doing these tasks, the producers did. And they'd send him notes and he'd say, 'Oh you two didn't get along'."

Aiken took a stab at politics himself not too long ago. The Democrat made a bid for the North Carolina 2nd congressional district in 2014 as the Democratic nominee, but he lost to GOP rep. George Holding. He wonders now if Trump's presidency is a lot like Trump's game show.

"I think to myself, the man as president definitely has a teleprompter sitting on his desk right now with people telling him, 'Well such and such is in the healthcare bill, don't say this'," notes Aiken. "I feel like half the time his teleprompter has broken down as president and he doesn't know what's going on."

This is a fair assessment that has been pointed out by many reporters. Trump comes off fairly well when he sticks to his speech and interview scripts. Agree or disagree with him, many of his presidential speeches are on point and stick to the topic. The minute he goes off-book and speaks his mind, such as with his many Twitter rants, he sounds like a different person - someone who is completely clueless, who is easily distracted and who craves attention and praise.

"I'm not saying this to be incendiary, but Donald Trump isn't the businessman that people believe he is because we saw him on TV playing the Apprentice.... And he did look like he was leading, But on The Apprentice, he doesn't lead," said Aiken.

The television personality explains how he thinks his party suffered such a crushing defeat in the 2016 election. "I think the Democrats, to some degree, hurt themselves more by constantly saying how horrible Trump is and how horrible the Republicans are because, it just, I think it helps it his argument that people are biased against him when all they hear is he's a fascist, all these horrible things about him," he explains. “I kind of feel like we'd be better served to let people see what he's going to do or not do.”